The phonebook plays a significant role in mobile communications. It is the source of the contact information for phone calls, text messages, faxes, instant messages and emails. A challenge in the mobile phone market is inserting, updating, and maintaining contact information stored in the phonebook. Currently, one must manually enter another person's contact information into one's mobile phone. This takes time, is often difficult with such small buttons and screens on phones, and is prone to errors with manual data entry. Often, the result is that many individuals do not enter contact information into their mobile phonebooks.
In addition, these problems restrict the user from adding alternate phone numbers (e.g. business phone, home phone, and fax) associated with a contact, even though today's phonebooks can support multiple numbers. With the growth of more sophisticated phones (e.g. Smart Phones, IP phones, and Internet capable phones) there is also a need to store email addresses and Instant Message (IM) addresses of contacts. Entering email and IM addresses, however, can be even more problematic than entering phone numbers.
Another problem for users today is the inability to control the distribution of contact information to others. For example, one might provide a mobile phone number or business telephone number to another person but not want to provide their home telephone number. Thus, users continue to face many problems in using and benefiting from the capabilities of a device phonebook.
A few mobile phones contain a profile that acts as an electronic business card or vcard. The subscriber must locate the profile within his or her mobile phone and manually enter all of their contact information. The profile is then stored in the mobile phone's memory. If the subscriber wants to send their vcard to another person, both the sender and the receiver must have vcard compatibility on their mobile phones. If both mobile phones are vcard compatible, then the first subscriber can manually send his or her profile to the second subscriber via an SMS. Not only is this a manual and complex process, but it may become difficult to remember to whom the subscriber has sent their contact information. In addition, most subscribers don't even know whether their mobile phones have this capability. In general, similar functionalities are buried within the many layers of settings and small screens of the mobile phones.